Chapter 1

The year I was at my most starry-eyed, I gave up my chance to study overseas.

Over my parents' furious objections I married my boyfriend and took in the abandoned baby he'd picked up off the side of the road.

From that day on I poured everything I had into that household and into raising that child.

Thirty years of it. And just when our son was grown and settled and I thought I might finally get to breathe, I was diagnosed with a terminal illness.

The treatment cost a fortune. I was about to reassure my husband and my son that I had the money.

Instead, they got angry.

"What do you mean, your money? That's this family's money. This disease is a bottomless pit. You could throw everything we have into it and never hear it land."

"Mom, Dad's right. I'm going to need money for years to come. Don't be so selfish."

So the two of them took me home by force, kept me on painkillers for ten years, and waited for me to stop breathing.

After I died, my husband cheerfully moved the woman he'd always loved into my house.

Then I opened my eyes.

I was back on the day my boyfriend stood in my doorway holding an abandoned baby and asked me whether we could keep him.

Chapter 1

I glanced at him and started to shut the door. "Call child services."

Caleb Granger panicked. "You can't be serious."

I looked at how righteous he managed to make his face and laughed. "Why not? Is that really more outrageous than handing a newborn to an unmarried woman who's never raised anything in her life?"

Caleb's brow drew tight, and the second he saw I wasn't bending, he softened first. "Sabrina, he's a person. Look how small he is. Somebody threw him away. We're getting married soon anyway. What's so wrong with starting a little early?"

He said it with all the sincerity I'd already heard once, in a life he doesn't remember living.

Now it turned my stomach. Back then I'd believed every word.

That was the year my parents wanted me overseas for postgraduate training. For Caleb and for that baby, I tore up my ticket, took the child, and married him without so much as a ceremony.

And then the long, slow donation of myself began.

At the end of it, after I died, they inherited what my family had built, and he spent the rest of his life comfortable with his lover and the son the two of them had made together.

"He is a person, and he is pitiful, and that's exactly why he should go where the professionals are," I said. "They have trained staff. I've never taken care of a baby in my life. How would I even do it?"

Caleb went still.

It was probably the first time I'd ever contradicted him.

We'd grown up three doors apart. I'd spent my whole life giving in to him, going soft the moment he asked, forgetting there was a me in the arrangement at all.

"But..." Then something occurred to him and he relaxed. "My mom can help you."

I laughed at that, privately. Help. Diane did help, in my first life. For about four days.

Not long after, she had a stroke, or said she did, and took to her bed paralyzed. I raised a baby with one hand and waited on her with the other.

It wasn't until she died and I finally read through her records that I found out there had never been any paralysis.

She'd just wanted to lie there and be served.

I took a slow breath. "Caleb, I think I need to reconsider what we're doing.

"You know my parents have always wanted me to go."

Then I moved to shut the door.

Caleb jammed his foot against it, frantic, still talking.

That was when I heard footsteps coming fast down the hall.

A young man jogged up. "Caleb! Come on, they need you at the office."

Trevor glanced at me, then at the bundle in Caleb's arms, and something complicated crossed his face.

I saw it, and I laughed at it privately.

Here we go.

Caleb had brought reinforcements. He was waiting for me to go soft and say it myself. Leave him with me. Go on, deal with work.

Then the baby would be inside my parents' house and Caleb would be free.

This time I didn't say anything. I just looked at him with both hands behind my back, and there was nothing ambiguous about it.

Trevor kept telling him to hurry.

Caleb made up his mind all at once. He swung toward me, begging with his whole face, and pushed the bundle into my arms. "Sabrina, please! You've got the softest heart of anyone I know. Let me finish this and I'll come straight back and we'll take care of him together!"

The weight hit my chest without warning, warm, smelling of milk.

A second later he was gone down the hall.

The feel of it was familiar and unbearable at the same time, and my whole body shook.

The pieces came up all at once.

Carrying him to the ER at two in the morning when his fever spiked. Crying the first time he called me Mom.

And Caleb pulling the medication out of my hand while our son said, flatly, "Mom, quit dragging it out. Go peacefully. You held Dad and her back their whole lives. Don't take anything from my kid too."

I'd let opportunity after opportunity go so I could stay home with him.

It's not an exaggeration to say that boy grew up on my blood.

And what he grew into stood by and watched me die, resenting the cost.

I looked at the empty hallway. Just me and the baby, who had started up again, thin and wavering, the two of us alone in the doorway.

Behind me my parents were asking what was going on. I looked down at him, set my teeth, and made up my mind.

Chapter 2

The next morning, hard knocking woke me up.

It woke my parents too.

Caleb was on the doorstep, exactly as I'd expected.

"Morning, Warren. Colleen."

"Caleb, this early?" My mother had her reservations about him, but the Grangers had lived three doors down for twenty years, so she was warm anyway. "You haven't eaten, have you? Perfect timing. Sit down and have something."

The friendlier they were, the less he could hold his face together.

He had no interest in breakfast. His entire mind was on the baby. "No, no, thank you, I already ate. I came to see Sabrina... to check on the baby."

He said it looking straight past both of them at me.

"The baby?" My mother was genuinely lost now. "Caleb, what baby? Whose baby?"

Caleb blinked, and his voice went tight. "The little boy I brought over yesterday! I left him with Sabrina!"

I sat at the table peeling an egg, taking my time, and didn't look up.

Caleb came around the table and grabbed for my arm. "Sabrina! Where is he?"

He was rough enough about it that my father's face went dark. "You want to talk, talk. Keep your hands to yourself."

"Warren, I'm telling you, I gave her a baby!" Caleb's voice was shaking. He turned on me and almost shouted it. "Sabrina! Where is the baby?"

I smiled a little. "You seem awfully worked up. He isn't yours, is he?"

The room went silent.

Caleb's face locked. "What are you talking about? I found him on the side of the road."

"Right. So I put him back on the side of the road."

"Is that so?" I stood up, perfectly calm. "You said he was something you picked up. So I returned him where he belonged."

Caleb's pupils shrank. "Where did you take him?"

"The side of the road," I said easily. "That's where you found him, isn't it? I left him there. Maybe the parents who dumped him would grow a conscience and come back for him."

"What did you just say?" He caught my wrist, and the grip was so hard I felt the bones grind. "Sabrina! Don't joke with me!"

My father was on his feet instantly. "Let go of her, Caleb."

I pulled my hand free and rubbed the red band around my wrist. "I don't have time to joke with you. I still have to pack for school."

"School?" Caleb stared at me blankly. "You can't go overseas. If you go, who's going to take care of the baby?"

My mother looked from one of us to the other, completely at sea. "What baby? What are you two talking about? And Sabrina's term starts next month. We settled all of this ages ago."

Caleb pulled in a breath and forced a smile at her. "Colleen, let me explain later."

Then he turned and grabbed my arm again, pleading. "Sabrina, just tell me where he is. He's a baby."

I looked at the perfect, self-righteous certainty of a man who had used me, and my blood came up so fast I had my hand halfway raised to slap him when-

Chapter 3

"Oh, my Lord, isn't that something."

Mrs. Porter leaned out of the apartment across the hall, alarmed. "They found an abandoned baby in the courtyard downstairs this morning. Face burning red, poor thing wasn't even responding. Ambulance took him ten minutes ago. Just breaks your heart."

Every bit of color went out of Caleb's face.

He stared at me, eyes threaded red. "You really did leave him outside?"

I stopped, too.

I had left that baby on Lydia Vaughn's doorstep. I'd rung the bell and waited across the street until I saw her carry him in.

So how had he ended up in our courtyard?

Before I could work it out, Caleb yanked me toward the stairs.

"Caleb! What do you think you're doing?" my father barked.

Caleb didn't hear a word of it. "The hospital. Right now."

My mother tried to get in front of him and he shoved her out of the way.

He half-dragged me into a cab and told the driver, in a voice that kept breaking, to go to Kingsbury Children's Hospital.

The whole way there he muttered that it was fine, he was going to be fine.

I watched him fall apart and felt nothing.

In my first life, when the cancer pain had me flat on my back with a fever of a hundred and four and I begged him to take me in, he told me to take something for it and stop making a production of it.

Now it was his child, and he was frantic.

There's a certain comedy to it. Nothing hurts until it's your turn to feel it.

In the emergency department, Caleb practically took hold of the first nurse he saw until she told him where the baby was.

Then he dragged me stumbling down the corridor.

We hadn't even reached the door when I heard a woman crying.

Inside, Lydia Vaughn had the baby against her chest, flushed and breathing in short, hard pulls, her cheek pressed to his forehead and tears coming off her chin one after another.

"Sweetheart, it's okay. It's okay." Her voice broke on it, and anyone in the room would have said that woman was terrified for that child.

Caleb rushed in, and his eyes went red instantly. Then he spun on me, and the hatred coming off him nearly filled the room.

"Sabrina! Are you satisfied? Look at him! Pneumonia, seizures, he almost-" His voice tore. "He's barely two months old. How could you be that cold?"

I looked at the small fragile thing on the bed and felt absolutely nothing move in me.

In my first life the three of them drained my youth and my health and climbed on my family's connections the whole way up.

And then stood there and watched me stop breathing.

Whether this one lived or died was not my concern.

"Cold?" I turned to look at Lydia. "Caleb, yesterday I put this baby on Lydia's doorstep myself. I left a note with him. So tell me..."

I let it sit a moment. "How did he spend the whole night outside and turn up in our courtyard at dawn?"

Lydia stared at me, all shock. "Sabrina, what on earth are you saying? Today is the first time I've laid eyes on this poor baby. I'm a nurse here, they pulled me down to help in pediatrics, and I picked him up because he was this sick and nobody was with him-"

The tears started again. "If you really had left a baby at my door, do you think I could have left him out there all night?

"If I'd been the one to find him, I'd have taken care of him.

"The three of us grew up together, Sabrina. You know exactly what kind of person I am."

I frowned.

I used to think Lydia was gentle and guileless too. That's why, when I gave up my place overseas, I had my father pull strings so the opening would go to her.

Watching my best friend go live the dream I'd set down.

I was glad to do it.

What I never saw coming was Lydia turning up years later as my son's biological mother.

As the woman Caleb had been in love with the entire time.

It took me until I was dying in that bed to understand how stupid I'd been.

I watched them both without saying anything.

Caleb looked at Lydia, delicate and streaming tears, and something flickered across his face a few times.

Then he drew a breath, and his eyes settled, and he stepped forward to stand between me and the two of them.

"Lyd, you don't have to say anything else. I believe you."

Then Caleb reached into his bag and took out a document.

The cover was brand new. The title was impossible to miss.

CERTIFICATE OF ADOPTION.

He opened it and turned the inside page to face me.

My name was printed across it in black and white.

Chapter 4

Sabrina Ellison. And in the line for the adopted child, filled in just as neatly: Owen Granger.

Blood shot straight to the top of my skull and my hands and feet went cold.

Then I remembered.

A few weeks earlier I'd been registering for a licensing exam that required in-person identity verification. I'd had a conflict that day, and Caleb volunteered to go handle it for me and took my ID.

I hadn't thought twice about it. I'd actually been touched that he was so thoughtful.

He'd planned the whole thing. He used my trust and filed adoption paperwork behind my back, and I never knew.

"Owen Granger..." Looking at that name brought thirty years of swallowed humiliation up my throat so fast I could barely stay on my feet.

That name was a cage.

A cage built to lock me back in with the boy who'd watched me die and the two people who'd made him.

Caleb saw how white I'd gone and actually took my hand to comfort me.

I threw it off. He didn't even get angry.

Caleb's face smoothed out. "Sabrina, I know it's a lot at once. I don't want to force you. But I couldn't stand by and watch you turn into someone cold, either. He has nobody. So I made the call for both of us. We're claiming him.

"The certificate's already issued. Legally, you're his mother now. And if you really want to fight me on it...

"then I'll just tell everyone he's ours. We're getting married anyway. Nobody's going to find it strange.

"I'm not going to watch a baby get warehoused as an orphan because the adults in the room were selfish."

He delivered it like a sermon.

I looked at that unbelievably sanctimonious face, and at Lydia beside him holding the baby with satisfaction leaking out around the edges of her grief.

Maybe I'd gone so far past anger that I came out the other side, because what I felt was a strange, spreading calm.

My mouth curved before I could stop it. I smiled.

"You're right, Caleb. With this, the baby's finally settled."

Caleb visibly let go of a breath. He looked relieved. Pleased with himself.

Lydia relaxed too, and dipped her head to brush her cheek against the baby's.

Then I changed direction. "There's just one thing. I leave the country next month. The paperwork's done, the tuition's paid. If I don't go, that place is wasted."

Caleb jumped on it. "That's nothing. Why would it go to waste?"

He looked at Lydia. "Let Lyd take it. You both trained in clinical medicine, it's the same field, and she's our closest friend.

"Sabrina, look how well it works out. Lyd goes in your place, so it's still one of ours living your dream. Better her than a stranger. You stay here and take care of the baby and our home. Everybody wins."

Lydia's eyes shone with tears. "Sabrina, trust me. I'll work so hard. I won't let you and Caleb down."

I watched the two of them trade lines like they'd rehearsed it.

And a picture came back to me from my first life: two sagging, shameless bodies tangled together, in my house, the week of my funeral.

I laughed out loud, softly, and they both froze and stared at me, baffled.

"All right, Caleb. Don't come back to me later and say you regret it.

"From this moment on, I'm this child's legal guardian."

I watched the tension drain out of both their faces, and something cold spread through my chest.

And under the cold, something that was almost excitement.

That was when the door banged open.

A young nurse came in fast with a printout, her face urgent. "The results are back on the baby. He needs to go up to the ICU now.

"This is the abandoned infant, correct? No family to sign, so we'll transfer him directly-"

She was already reaching to move him onto the gurney.

I put my hand out and stopped her. "Who told you he has no family?"